A. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of network management, and more particularly to maintenance operations on elements within a managed telecommunications network.
B. Copyright Notice/Permission
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. The following notice applies to the software and data as described below and in the drawings hereto: Copyright. COPYRGT.2001-002, BellSouth Intellectual Property Management Corporation.
C. Description of the Related Art
Telecommunications companies (i.e., service providers) build, operate, and maintain very large communications and related networks. Part of the operation and maintenance of these networks involves the use of operations software, typically divided into a number of functional areas such as engineering, provisioning, and the like. Provisioning software aids service providers in receiving requests for service or alterations to existing service, be it voice and/or data, and configuring both the telecommunications network and/or related networks and systems (e.g., accounting, billing, and the like) to provide the new service requested. Engineering operations software in contrast is typically used by service providers to configure and monitor network elements to ensure they perform their functions properly. Service providers also use engineering operations software to facilitate service provisioning and monitoring.
One of the primary engineering operations software systems is the element management system (EMS) software. Typical EMS packages are centralized service network management applications that manage and control (typically via standards such as SNMP and the like) the various elements in the telecommunications and/or related networks. Within the core telecommunications network the elements often are multiservice elements such as frame relay, SMDS, ATM, IP, and/or the like switches. Some of the operations performed by typical EMS packages include: circuit provisioning to establish end-to-end network connectivity; logical provisioning of individual circuits and to establish network-wide parameters; providing audit trails on activities such as the length of a user session and the addition or modification of switches, logical ports, trunks, circuits, and the like; display of network statistics for real-time status information on logical and physical ports; display of usage data on logical and physical ports and the like for network planning and trend analysis; and collecting different types of traps for alarm indications and statistics logging for the numerous objects in the telecommunications networks (e.g., switches, trunks, physical ports, logical ports, permanent virtual circuits, switched virtual circuits, and the like).
With regard to traps in particular, the EMS package typically reports all traps from the various elements in the network being managed to a central repository comprised of one or more fault servers and/or related databases. However, with the explosive growth in demand for telecommunications services over the past few years the number of elements within the service providers' networks have dramatically increased. As a result, the number of faults occurring in service providers' networks has swelled, thereby generating so many traps at a such a rapid pace that existing systems and methods of collecting, analyzing, and managing these traps have been overwhelmed. Accordingly, there is a need for improved systems and methods of collecting and managing traps in telecommunications and/or related networks.